Friday, July 29, 2011

Less government: Rivers shouldn't burn

Time magazine. August 1, 1969:

"Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. "Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown," Cleveland's citizens joke grimly. "He decays". . . The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: "The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes." It is also -- literally -- a fire hazard."

Here's what "self regulation" looks like. Are you sure you don't want any regulation?